Music Video Rough Cut and Brief Update

So as promised, here is the video of what we have done so far for the music video. A few quick things as well. First off in regards to the video, this video is still in the editing production stage, which you will obviously be able to tell watching this video, given that there is no footage of the band and that we haven’t altered and fixed up the image just yet, it’s still lacking polish to it. Also what you will obviously notice is that there is no audio tack along with this cut, I was going to put it on, but I had a bit trouble trying to find the track. I do have the track somewhere either on my laptop or external hard drive at home, because what I do with my music is when I download songs or albums, I save them onto my external hard drive because basically my lap top is suffering from very low memory, so it has to go straight on there. Now obviously I have the track, because I’m a huge fan of the band, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere on my lap top or the external hard drive, so I’m going to try and look for it again over the holidays, or download it again, and then I’ll put up this same video but with the track on it. So recently me and Chloe have left the editing for a bit, as we can’t continue without the band footage and the end we are going to re-shoot, and have been focusing on the publication side of the project, mainly turning our attention to the magazine, in particular the magazine cover. At the moment we are doing a basic rough design on Microsoft Office Publication software, to get a feel for it will look like and to sample it and mess around with it, to see what fits best and what looks the best. After the rough design, we will be using Photoshop to put the cover together to create the best outcome.  At the moment we are using real photos of the actual band taken off Google, but over the holidays, I’ll be taking the people who are going to be in my version of the band and get loads of different photos of the band which I will use to incorporate into many of the publication side of things, such as the magazine and the digi-pack for the CD. Not to mention both me and Chloe will be focusing all of our attention to all the different aspects of the publication side of the project and getting things organized to shoot the band footage, so when we return from the holidays, we can just jump straight into filming and get it all finished off, and hopefully finish the video completely. If you want to know more about what we are doing over the holidays check out my last entry which explains a little better of what will be occurring and keep your eyes peeled over the blog for posts during the holidays.

Editing Updates - A Couple of Problems

So as I have stated in recent blogs, I’ve been busy working away at the edit, well of the edit of what has been done so far. Right now I’ve edited all I can and there are a few issues that have sprung up. I’ve just realised that a lot of the footage that we shot as the end, the first footage me and Chloe ever shot for this project, will have to be scrapped from the looks of things as a lot of it is basically unusable, now by that I don’t mean that it’s bad or looks terrible, far from it really as it does look pretty good. No the problem is that, while editing it all together, I’ve been using the story board as a brief template for the timing order, as at the moment I don’t have the track to place over it. When I created the story board, I continuously listened and played back the track over and over, and used this to map out a sort of time frame for each image, so basically all the images time equalled the full song, which is why I have been using to work out how long the each scene should be from the footage we shot and where to place the band parts appropriate to how the song plays out, so key vocal parts which I had mapped out for in the story board still occur in the video etc. Now of course as you know I had to change my initial setting of the music video which I had drawn onto the story board, instead of it being set in a woodland area, it changes to a combination of suburban area and some woodland, which made it a lot easier to film. Unfortunately I didn’t fully take in to consideration time frame when filming and only used the story board for certain parts of the filming, so I’ve ended up with too much footage of the chase, so the final few scenes are ultimately going to have to be cut and changes, which isn’t a problem as the video should still make sense. The song itself is roughly 3 minutes 16 seconds long and right now I’ve edited all the footage up to 2minutes 44 seconds, which leaves which only leaves around 32 seconds of footage left to film the ending, much isn’t much. I’ve already gone back through and cut and shortened all I can out of what we have so far, so I’m only left with this short space time. Luckily I’ve got the Christmas holidays coming up soon to have some time off to plan and write a miniature storyboard for the ending and try and work out how me and Chloe can finish this video. In the meantime by the end of this week I’m going to upload what we have done so far and show you how the video has been coming along. Also in the holidays a lot of work is going to be going into arranging the filming of the band scenes for when we get back and during the holidays both me and Chloe are going to be working on the other aspects of the project, mainly the print projects, such as the album cover, single cover, magazine, adverts etc. So very busy times a head.

Updates

Quick progress update on what's been occurring. So recently there has been a great focus on the editing stage, despite not all the filming been done.  Now when I say that, that doesn’t exactly mean panic, the only bits that haven’t been done are the band shots, the big and constant issue of this project. Me and Chloe managed to get all the chase shots done just fine because there was less issues to factor in with just the two of us filming it. The band shots on the other hand has had numerous issues which I admit may have overlooked. Firstly issues getting the actors, this has been the main annoyance. At times I was missing half my band with no time to obtain replacements, and then there were times when they couldn’t do it because of other commitments, and finally there were times when they just weren’t in sixth form altogether from being ill or away. I did however try to find replacements some days but a lot of the time it was too short notice for those people having already made prior arrangements, so that was the main issue. The other issue was being able to get one of the places to film in, that being either the hall or the drama room at my sixth form. These two places different places are only free at most one or two nights out of the school week, with the drama room being used for extracurricular activities such as drama club after school some nights and the hall being used for different music rehearsals and clubs, the hall has become even more used on a night for these rehearsals due to the schools winter concert coming up, with the hall eventually becoming unusable during the week of the concert as the hall will to decorated and set up for the concert and me and Chloe wouldn’t be allowed to move or change the setting to film. Now obviously I could of filmed on a night when they weren’t being occupied but I’ve just had the worse luck as my actors have always either been off, away, ill or busy on these days when the rooms were available, so me and Chloe have just had terrible luck, not to mention me and Chloe have been busy on some of these days with things such as our job s and I was ill for a few days one week, so wasn’t in. But despite not having all the footage needed we started editing anyway, bet this than sat twiddling our thumbs doing nothing.  Plus it gives us a great head start with the edit and allow us to in a way keep up with the schedule so we aren’t completely off track. Currently I have been editing all the footage and have shortened the chase footage and cut out all the bad bits and pieces and have been watching it over so it looks good and there is no continuity, and so far nothing has been noticed which is good. As for the band footage, at the moment we are just using the images of the band from the story board and dropping them into the time line so we have an understanding on what it will look like and what we need to do. So there is still a lot left  to do and things are a little stressful  but I’m not completely panicking yet.